Oblique Spinal Implant with Anti-Migration Features
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing spinal implants often subside into the surrounding environment after implantation, leading to loosening or damage of vertebral bodies, and require invasive surgical approaches that can cause tissue damage and complications, especially in patients with prior surgeries or anatomical obstacles.
Innovation Solution
The development of spinal implants configured for oblique angular insertion, featuring anti-migration and anti-rotation designs, visualization markers, and fixation elements with anti-backout features, allowing for minimally invasive insertion through a narrow access window while maximizing endplate coverage and promoting sagittal balance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If traditional rigid fixation implants are used, then immediate stable fixation is achieved, but implant subsidence occurs causing loosening or damage to vertebral bodies
Solution Approach 1:
The implant transitions from a static rigid structure to a dynamic system that adapts to physiological conditions. The porous coating and flexible fixation elements allow the implant to settle and conform to the vertebral body surface while maintaining fixation strength, preventing both subsidence and loosening
Solution Approach 2:
The implant surface incorporates a porous coating that allows bone ingrowth and creates a biological anchor. This porous structure distributes loads more evenly across the implant-vertebra interface, reducing point stresses that cause subsidence while maintaining overall fixation stability
2Ease of operation
If invasive surgical approaches are used to access the spine, then adequate surgical access is achieved, but tissue damage and complications increase
Solution Approach 1:
The implant and surgical approach utilize an oblique angular trajectory that accesses the vertebral body through a different spatial pathway. This oblique approach allows surgeons to reach the implantation site through narrower corridors, avoiding direct disruption of major muscle groups and ligaments while maintaining adequate access for implant placement
3Ease of operation
If midline or lateral approaches are used, then direct access to spinal levels is achieved, but tissue intrusion and surgical complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The implant design incorporates asymmetric features including a unilateral wing structure and asymmetric fixation element placement. This asymmetry allows the implant to be accessed and inserted through a less invasive oblique pathway while maintaining stable fixation, avoiding the need for symmetric midline or lateral approaches that require greater tissue disruption
Data Source
AI summary
Spinal implants that are configured for a minimally invasive approach to a patient's intervertebral disc space, optimized to avoid blood vessels and nervous tissue, maximizing endplate coverage and promoting sagittal balance, are provided. Insertion and fixation can be accomplished through a narrow access window, thereby allowing better access to more spinal levels while being less invasive than other approaches. The spinal implants may facilitate fusion, and include visualization features to assist in the implantation and verify proper placement and vary segmental angle of lordosis. Methods of implanting the spinal implants to treat a patient's spine are also disclosed.